


catgut wires held me together

by pentipus



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Blood, Hannibal's yacht????, M/M, plate tectonics, sutures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-07
Updated: 2015-10-07
Packaged: 2018-04-25 07:13:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4951372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentipus/pseuds/pentipus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal drew nylon sutures through my cheek after the fall, a black thatch carefully laid outside and in. I tongued the cord on the inside and found that his work had been rough, limited by the aching, bloody stretch of my mouth. He worked in silence, his face still, even as I clamped my hands down hard enough to hurt on the entry and exit wounds in his naked torso, trying to hold in the thick blood that bubbled out when he shifted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	catgut wires held me together

Hannibal drew nylon sutures through my cheek after the fall, a black thatch carefully laid outside and in. I tongued the cord on the inside and found that his work had been rough, limited by the aching, bloody stretch of my mouth.

We sat naked and shaking in the cabin of the yacht that he owned, our soiled clothes piled wetly in the little shower to burn later. Hannibal had settled himself between my open legs, turning my face away from him with his forefinger and thumb, before cleaning the wound Dolarhyde had given me. He worked in silence, his face still, even as I clamped my hands down hard enough to hurt on the entry and exit wounds in his naked torso, trying to hold in the thick blood that bubbled out when he shifted. When he had finished with me he stitched himself up, his skin twisting grey and rubbery as he leant around to sew up the puncture wound the dragon’s tooth had left in him.

As I watched the deft movements of his hands I could feel the tectonic plates of my body shifting, cracks opening up at mouth and collar and gut and skull. Fault lines where my insides bled out of me, where what was underneath was thrust violently above ground.

 

It was two weeks before Hannibal would let me take the stitches out of my shoulder, four before he would even consider taking the ones from my mouth. “The wound will rupture,” he said, gutting the fish I had caught for him. “You’ll be back to where you started.”

 _I’ll never be back to where I started_ , I thought.

 

Hannibal insisted on removing the stitches himself, making a joke about butchery that made me wince. I sat and watched him sterilise scalpel and forceps before he ushered me out onto the deck, where we sat together out in the sunshine as though we were taking tea.

Hannibal’s hands were steady as he cut the external sutures away from me one by one; I felt the tug of the cord as he pulled them out but it did not hurt. I thought about how the scar was curving up like a smile, even as my closed mouth curved down in a frown.

“Will,” Hannibal said softly when he had finished. “Open your mouth.”

I looked at him, tilting my head back as I opened up, letting my tongue lie flat between my teeth as Hannibal poked the forceps inside. I heard the gentle clack of my tongue as it moved inside my mouth, while Hannibal’s careful movements cut away the wire that had held my insides together since the fall.

I felt again as though the hard crust of my body were cracking apart, great lithospheric fissures opening where there were none before. I had the overwhelming urge to crawl under something solid until the earth stopped quaking.

Instead I sat, silent and still, as Hannibal worked on me. The grounding touch of his fingers at my chin, my temples, my crown; anchoring me in the storm.

He pulled the last stitch free with a tug that caught at the skin inside my cheek, I felt a trickle of blood and I poked at the little hole that Hannibal had made, letting the blood catch on the white-pink tip of my tongue. I let my eyes flick to Hannibal’s and caught him transfixed, his hands raised level with my chin, scalpel and forceps gripped unshaking between us.

I knew that if he kissed me then he would taste my blood. I wondered if he was thinking the same thing.

He looked at me, from my open mouth to my eyes, and I felt the earth shift beneath me, tipping me suddenly forward and into him; our bodies making mountains at the points where we converged, within which our red innards bubbled.


End file.
